BAGHDAD, Aug 26: A US air strike on two Kurdish police outposts on Sunday killed four policemen and wounded eight others in the restive province of Diyala in what seems to be a case of ‘friendly fire’, officials said.

“Four policemen have been killed and eight wounded when two US helicopters and two planes carried out an air strike this morning against two police outposts north of Baquba,” Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga militia said.

The incident comes less than three days after a US fighter jet dropped a bomb in southern Afghanistan that was intended for Taliban rebels but ended up killing three British soldiers and wounding two more.

Yawar said the incident on Sunday occurred near the town of Qara Tepe in an area largely inhabited by Kurdish Shias.

He said Kurdish forces have been deployed in Diyala, particularly north of Baquba, at the request of the US-led coalition forces, to “fight terrorism and the firing at the outposts was a mistake”. The administration of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region demanded an investigation into the incident.

“An accurate investigation should be launched to avoid such incidents in the future,” the Kurdish interior ministry said in a statement.—AFP